'67 SWC and Cotton Bowl Champion reunite in Aggieland this weekend
By: Matt Simon, 12thman.com
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As the dog days of a hot 1967 summer brought ever closer the start of another Aggie football season, there was for the first time in a long time cautious optimism surrounding the program.
It had been 10 years since A&M's last winning season, the infamous final year of Bear Bryant's tenure in Aggieland. Following his sudden departure, the program had never really recovered—averaging just under three wins a season under the next two head coaches.
That was starting to change, however, under Bryant protégé Gene Stallings. The young Texan had taken the helm of his alma mater at the ripe age of 29, winning three games in his first campaign of 1965.
The '66 season saw progress—A&M won four games, but perhaps more importantly all four wins came in Southwest Conference play, the Aggies' first winning league slate since '57.
A team loaded with youth had gained experience in freshman games (freshmen were not eligible at the time to play varsity—that rule changed in 1972). And a lot of the now sophomores got the chance to play after Stallings turned the roster over as he took over the program.
"We thought we were ready to play," Hargett said. "As it turns out, we weren't."
In the season's first game, which in a rare move also happened to be the SWC opener, A&M went back and forth with SMU on national television. A&M held a 17-13 lead late in the fourth before the Mustangs used a long kick return and three consecutive completions to set up a touchdown pass on what would be the game's final offensive snap.
A week later, the Aggies would battle Purdue in Dallas' Cotton Bowl stadium. The Boilermakers, who had won the Rose Bowl the year before, would finish this campaign as the Big Ten tri-champions and a top-10 team. On this day in Fair Park, they would hold a 10-point lead over A&M in the fourth before Hargett found Bob Long on a 60-yard touchdown pass. The Aggies forced a punt, then drove all the way to the Boilermaker 35-yard line before stalling on downs, and Purdue escaped with a 24-20 victory.
Another road trip, this time to Baton Rouge, resulted in a 17-6 loss to the rival Tigers in a game that Hargett admits "wasn't as close as the score". LSU would finish the year as champions of the Sugar Bowl.
A&M finally returned to College Station, but luck did not change. The Aggies dropped a heartbreaking 19-18 decision to Florida State at Kyle Field, with the Seminoles converting a late fumble into the go-ahead touchdown.
And just like that, a season with promise had a very sour start. Four tight ballgames that for the most part could have swung either way all went the other direction.
A&M was 0-4.
"It was frustrating," Hargett recalls. "We just couldn't make that play that we needed to make to get over the hump."
In the years of Aggie football lore, the last place you'd look to turn a team's fortunes was a trip to Lubbock. But a battle with Texas Tech—which had picked off 8th-ranked Texas in Austin a few weeks before—became a de facto must-win game for this team and its dream.
Back in the SWC days, a conference title meant a trip to the hallowed Cotton Bowl. It was a bowl game A&M had been to just twice before—both in the early '40s.
"We figured those would be the teams that would vie for the championship," Hargett said. "So if we could beat Tech, we're right back in the thick of things and would get a chance to go to the Cotton Bowl."
The Aggies had the upper hand early. After a scoreless first quarter, A&M would build a 14-3 lead and take that into the locker room. The Red Raiders, however, cashed two drives in and had a 17-14 advantage going to the fourth.
A 13-yard pass to Larry Stegent gave A&M the lead back early in the decisive frame, but Tech would answer late to take a 24-21 lead with just a few minutes to go.
After three straight incompletions, Hargett found Bob Long for a 28-yard gain to keep hopes alive.
Bob Long's 19 career TD catches was a record that stood for over 40 years. It still sits among the top six totals in school history.
"He went up among three or four guys and caught the ball," Hargett said. "That got us to the 15-yard line and gave us a chance to win the game."
Lining up for what was going to be the final play of the game, the huddle was quiet.
"We didn't say anything," Hargett said. "We knew we had to score. We were down three. We had a chance to tie the game, but I think Coach Stallings and all of us knew that if we tied we probably weren't going to get to go to the Cotton Bowl no matter what happened the rest of the way. So he made the decision to go for the win, and it turned out to be the right decision."
Edd Hargett threw for nearly 5,400 yards in his A&M career--a total that to this day ranks among the best in school history.
With 15 yards to go and one play to get it, obviously the play call was a pass.
But has he took the snap, Hargett caught something out of the corner of his eye.
Something yellow.
"The lost fact in there was I knew I had another play," Hargett said. "I saw the guy jump and I saw the referee throw the flag. It wasn't like it was just all or nothing on that play. But for some reason, we had all our receivers to the left side except for (Larry) Stegent. So the right side was completely clear. Their end had dropped back into coverage and 'Steeg' knocked him out at the goal line and I went in untouched."
The thrilling victory did more than just keep the Aggies' Cotton Bowl hopes alive.
"I think we saw that we could win," Hargett said. "And we saw we had some people we thought we could beat for the rest of the year.
"As it turned out, that's what happened."
In Fort Worth, the Aggies had a 7-0 lead when Billy Hobbs picked off the first pass of the fourth quarter and took it 100 yards for a touchdown. A&M would win the game, 20-0.
Baylor was next, and the defense dismantled the Bears—picking off six passes and forcing two fumbles in a 21-3 victory.
"Arkansas was close, and we pulled away in the fourth quarter (33-21 win)," Hargett said. "Rice (18-3 win) was kind of the same way, we made a big play on defense, went down and scored and put that one out of reach."
Just like that, it was five in a row for Stallings' Aggies. And they were one victory away from bringing Texas A&M its first Cotton Bowl trip in 25 years.
Only one team stood in the way.
Texas.
With a jumble of teams vying for the championship, it was truly a must-win scenario. A loss would invoke tiebreakers to see who got the trip to Dallas, none of which favored the maroon and white.
In front of a packed house of 45,000 at Kyle Field, the game was a defensive grinder. In fact, a second-quarter A&M field goal made for the only points of the game heading into the fourth.
Texas punched in an early touchdown to take its first lead of the game.
Two plays later, Texas A&M punched back.
An 80-yard touchdown pass from Hargett to Long would prove the winner, as the defense picked off two passes and notched two turnovers on downs to clinch one of the more memorable Aggie victories in the series' long history.
"If you look at statistics all year we were outgained in nearly everything…everything except for turnovers," Hargett said. "We had (39) turnovers in 11 games, including the Cotton Bowl. Just think about that. That's a lot of interceptions, lot of fumbles recovered. That's the main thing we did. (At the end of the Texas game) the defense did what they did all year."
So Texas A&M was Cotton Bowl bound, and ironically it would be Stallings' mentor, Bryant, and his 8th-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide on the other sideline.
That fact, however, was not used for motivation.
"That really never came up," Hargett said.
In fact, Hargett likened the matchup to an intrasquad scrimmage—so similar were the teams' playbooks.
"We could (have) put our films up and watch those to get ready," Hargett said. "Same thing, same schemes…everything was the same. We made a couple of adjustments and tried to do things a little bit different, but not much. We just kind of lined up and played. It was just a lot of fun."
It would be the Aggies on the winning end this time in what was most definitely a stunning upset. A&M's defense picked off 'Bama QB Kenny Stabler three times in what would be his final collegiate game.
"Just like we always done, we'd get ahead and the defense holds them," Hargett said.
In this now infamous photo, Stallings gets lifted off the ground by his mentor--Bear Bryant--following A&M's Cotton Bowl win.
And this weekend, in front of 100,000-plus at Kyle Field, the men of this great Aggie football team will celebrate their golden anniversary—with the same program they faced on that cold New Year's Day in Dallas on the other sideline.
"I'm really looking forward to it, seeing some of those guys I maybe haven't seen in 50 years," Hargett said.
